Refractions
by froldgapp
Summary: When Keith drifts further away from the team, Lance is determined to get to the bottom of it. Klance
1. Chapter 1

Left foot, right foot, left knee, left knee, right instep, left knee, hold.

'I miss him.' Lance tipped the sponge back onto his right foot and continued tapping it back and forth while Hunk worked. The engineer knelt with his head buried inside the bowels of a beat-up old engine. 'Don't you miss him?' No answer. 'Hunk?'

There was a solid clang! and yelp. Hunk extracted himself from the engine, rubbing at his sore head with one grimy hand. 'Huh? Who? Bi Bo Bi?' Hunk's face darkened and he muttered, 'I hate that jerk.'

Lance blustered, almost choking on his indignation, and sat forward. The sponge ball rolled off in a wide arc and was immediately set upon by the space mice. 'Him!' he threw his hand at the stars stretching beyond the window. 'Mullet. The artist formerly known as the Black Paladin formerly know as the Red Paladin formerly known as the wash-out formerly known as the garrison hot-shot.' Quieter then, 'Keith.'

Humming quietly, Hunk clipped the torque wrench back into place. He fixed Lance with a stare then issued an all-too casual: 'Makes sense.'

Lance's mouth dropped open, appalled. '"Makes sense." That's all?'

'Yeah.' Hunk shrugged, thought a moment longer, shrugged again, then climbed to his feet. The space mice tumbled past him on the sponge. He delicately stepped around them. 'Yeah, I mean, I miss him too and all but, you know: even more lion changes, all this coalition stuff, and then Matt being around…' He rolled a loose bolt under his sole. 'I honestly haven't had time to think about it much, man.'

'It!?' Lance squawked. 'Haven't! Not! Whuh- What?! Not enough time?!' He dogged Hunk, trying his best to meet his eye but getting a faceful of wire-brush or paint thinner instead. He snatched at his friend's arm. 'Any time we form Voltron? Or eat together? Or you see a terrible haircut!?' He huffed, 'Any time I pilot Red? Fly her into your flank because she's too damn fast and I'm too slow?'

Hunk clipped closed the toolkit and hummed again, thoughtful. He picked up the kit with a groan and left the defunkt engine unfinished on the floor. When he paused at the door, he spoke with no small amount of trepidation. 'Yeah, but, you guys always had that like… thing.'

Lance's eyes narrowed. 'What thing?'

Hunk chuckled. 'You know: the thing?'

Small words, dropped like heavy stones: 'We do not have a thing.'

A large hand landed on Lance's shoulder and squeezed. 'Oh, man. You have a thing. Real bad, you have a thing.' And he was gone.

'We don't have a thing,' Lance said to an empty room.

* * *

Thanks! I'm on tumblr as froldgapp.


	2. Chapter 2

'What,' Keith ground out between clenched teeth, 'are you looking at?'

They were sitting alone in a holding area-cum-hangar, ostensibly to 'look after the supplies', but it was more likely a case of 'bond for the good of the universe.' A slow drip-drip of water sounded somewhere in the chilly cavern; loud enough to set teeth on edge.

'What do you mean, "what are you looking at?"' Lance spoke with as much grit as he could manage, but his cheeks had already started burning from being caught.

'You keep looking at me,' Keith said. 'Still checking for purple?' He stretched out his right leg and flexed his toes.

'No,' Lance sing-songed. He sucked his cheeks in and spat. It struck the side of the storage silo and echoed. Nice.

'Well?' Keith pressed. 'What are you looking at?'

'I don't know. You look sad.'

'Sad?' It was almost a sneer.

Lance continued, pitchy and defensive, 'Yeah, well… you look real sad now. All stooped and tired. Like, since the whole blade thing.'

'You always tell me I look sad.'

'H'eng?'

Keith threw his hands out and waved them to the left and right with each new quote, presumably mimicking Lance. He played it a touch too vaudeville for the sharpshooter's liking. '"Keith is moody. Keith is grumpy. Keith's vocal chords were damaged in a freak thunderstorm and he can't make happy sounds. Does anyone have documentary evidence of Keith laughing? When Keith smiles the universe contracts."'

Lance laughed, slapping his knee. 'I am honest-to-Pete the funniest guy in, like, the known universe.' He sobered quickly and held up one finger. 'Apart from – there was this one nite club we went to. There was this like troupe of sort of gelatinous asses or I dunno… sort of jellyfish things that were mostly butt. It was wil–'

'Okay, I get it. I'm a downer,' Keith sighed. 'Spare me the stories. Nite club: sounds really nice.'

There was a weight to Keith's words that drew the heat from the room and had Lance staring again. Keith didn't return his look; just glared at his boots, scrunching his toes inside the thin material. Lance's eyes picked out the scuffs and paler panels where the suit had obviously been mended.

He began again slowly, cautiously, 'Yeah, but I was joking back then.' He scuffed his heel against the soft earth. 'That you were always down and stuff. I was just joking, man.'

'You were joking that I looked sad?'

'Yeah, well when you put it like that, I–'

The boys fell into a sudden and tense silence as a couple of tentacled members of the logistics crew came to collect a few more boxes. They nodded at the paladin, but gave Keith a wide berth, eyeing him suspiciously.

Lance smiled and followed them with his eyes. When he turned back to Keith, he collected himself with a too-shallow breath. 'I was just kidding around. You know: for shits and giggles.'

Keith snorted and dug a deep trough in the dirt with his heel. 'More shit, less giggle.'

Blood rushed to Lance's face. 'Dude, it was just for fun.' He tutted. 'Chill.'

Keith lurched towards him. 'It wasn't fun for me!'

The two crew members halted by the door and pretended to fuss at the lock. Their stalked eyes strayed back to the altercation. Tentacles snaked to their blasters and rested there. A galra is a galra is a galra . That was the wisdom of the coalition after all.

'It wasn't fun for me, Lance!' He said his name like a swear word, eyes dancing with emotion.

Any words that might have come stuck in the back of Lance's throat under Keith's keen scrutiny. He swallowed past them, feeling greener and dumber and softer than he had done in a long time. Keith panted. The evening light slanting in through the entrance caught his eyes and lit up whole nebulae of purples, indigo and scarlet that blinked out again almost instantly.

What had Lance seen in those uncanny eyes in that brief, savage shock? The sliver of something new, something hard. The first layers in a forming pearl.

Silence drew out the minutes between them.

Lance elbowed Keith meekly, barely a touch. 'I was just kidding,' he said weakly.

'Keith.' Kolivan's impressive silhouette cut the light in two. The crew members slithered off, squeaking unhappily. 'Our devices have been sufficiently installed. Let's go.'

Keith stood and brushed off his thighs. He slipped in behind Kolivan who did not break his stride as he nodded a curt greeting to Lance.

'Hey!' Lance called, broken from his rattled trance. Keith continued in Kolivan's shadow, hands folded behind his back. Their ship had already started powering up. 'Hey! Keith!'

Nothing. 'Hey!' Lance yelled, angry now and still ignored.

Damn his luck and damn his mouth. Just before Lance shouted a frustrated, 'Mullet!' Keith turned. Lance watched as familiar resignation and a quiet kind of hope bled out to bitter disappointment.

'Go fuck yourself, Lance,' Keith said. 'You'll have a real good time.'

His face blinked out behind his marmora mask and with a few sharp strides he was gone, swallowed up by the closing hatch of the ship.

Only when the final rumbles of the jets diminished did Lance remember to breathe again.

'Fuck you,' he said. He kicked an old piece of casing across the room. 'Fuck you.'

OoO

On Tumblr as Froldgapp :)


	3. Chapter 3

'Would you say I'm more of a Robert Redford type or a Paul Newman type?'

Lance dipped a worn rag into a bucket of soapy water and withdrew it again, dripping puddles of oily water all over the floor.

'No, no. I'm too well shorn for the Springsteen look.' He slapped the cloth against a new portion of metal, disrupting some of the dirt that clung to it in gritty clods. 'And Banderas would kill for this profile.' The cloth squeaked across another panel. 'But you're right, Red' he sighed dreamily. 'I just have to let Lance be Lance.' He patted her rump. 'Thanks for the pep talk, girl.'

'Lance!' Pidge stood at the door, one hand hooked around the jamb. 'The blade are here for their check-in with Allura and Shiro. Keith is squished in between them somewhere, I think. Come say "hi."' She swung away to leave and swung back again at Lance's shrill protests. 'What?'

'No,' Lance whined. 'Get him to come down here.'

Pidge analysed him like a particularly badly written piece of code. 'You want him to see you cleaning Red.'

A lackadaisical gesture with the sopping cloth sprayed grey-brown water in an impressive spurt that had Pidge ducking behind the door. 'Come on, Pidge. You know he thinks I treat her like garbage.' He twisted at the hip to address Red directly. 'I do _not_ think you're garbage. I think you're a beautiful, talented lady-lion. And you are very, very fast.' He turned back to Pidge with the winning smile of a demonstration well done.

'I mean,' Pidge said. 'You did pilot her through that cruiser rather than,' she moved her hand in a smooth arc, 'around it.'

Mortified, Lance rushed towards her making shushing noises. 'Keep your voice down!' he demanded in a whisper. 'He could be anywhere.'

Pidge nudged the cloth out of his hand with her toe. It hit the floor with a confident splat. 'Your space ninja is upstairs, Lance. Safely tucked away behind emo kevlar and a repurposed _Ghibli_ _Kodama_ mask. Let's go.'

Lance pressed his long fingers to his brow and collected himself. 'Okay,' he breathed. 'But please don't tell him I planted her up to the tail on Xeplomia V4JB.' Pidge rolled her eyes and yanked him out of the room.

'Bye Red!' he waved. The Red Lion answered with an easy rumble.

OoO

They found Keith in his quarters, freshly showered in only boxers and socks, and towelling off a mop of hair that defied gravity more and more the longer it grew. It sprang out in all directions, thick and wiry on top and curling around the temples and ears. Keith's time away had done a number on more than his hair. Still compact, still lithe. But harder now, like his eyes. Like his voice. Always broad about the shoulders and somewhat foal-like for it, the blade agent had grown into his frame. Diamond-cut muscles swept elegantly across his shoulders, arms and chest; shifting and jumping with every precise movement. A narrow waist, corded with muscle, sloped into unholy hip bones and a flat panel of darkly haired flesh.

'Hey,' he said.

Lance choked on spit and sputtered noisily until Pidge whacked it free with a few unsympathetic thumps. Hunk was already there: sitting on the bed, casually picking through Keith's small knapsack as though the owner weren't literally _right there._ 'Oh, hey guys!' he chirped and pulled another dark hood from the pack followed by a coarse file of some kind.

'Welcome back, Keith,' Pidge beamed, then stage-elbowed Lance who was slowly recovering from near spontaneous combustion. 'He's happy to see you too.'

'A ray–' Lance wheezed. 'Of sunshine.'

The former red paladin's welcoming smile slipped from his face. 'Of course he is,' Keith muttered. He padded into the bathroom and emerged a few beats later sporting his old dark grey tee and a pair of black jeans that were earning overtime restraining his thighs.

Pidge shot Lance a suspicious glance that said two things at once: 1) She now knew they fought on the last mission and, 2) It was all Lance's fault.

'Yeah, well… Red told me to say "howdy" so–'

Keith held up his hand, and to everyone's astonishment (not least of all Lance's), he actually shut his mouth.

'Not my lion, don't care,' Keith said, and slipped past them and out of the room. The trio stared after him, wounded. Pidge's face was an open mask of disappointment.

'Well somebody's a grumpy gally.' Lance folded his arms and dropped his back against the wall.

'He's probably just tired, guys,' Hunk said, standing to collect the damp towel from the floor. 'They, like, _just_ got in. You saw him. S'not like he's been laying back watching reruns of _Gilmore Girls._ '

'We're all tired,' Pidge complained. 'He knows how it is; he used to be one of us. What a jerk. I'm going to find Matt.'

Hunk drifted behind her, flinging the towel over the top of the door to dry. He clapped Lance on the cheek. 'Don't take it personally, man, but maybe throw out an apology before you start rinsing him next time.'

'I didn't mean…'

'Yeap, yeap, yeap,' Hunk nodded knowingly, but very done. 'Just put it in the chamber for when you next see him: "I'm sorry Keith."'

Lance was left alone in Keith's barren bedroom. 'Why'd you have to leave, you dummy.' He struck out and kicked the bathroom door, dislodging the towel. It slapped loudly onto his face, stinking of simple bar soap and hair grease. Him. Mullet. Keith. Lance wailed, horrified, and peeled it from his face with a few distraught ' _ews'._ He considered shoving it beneath Keith's pillow to dampen up the bed, but then realised the blades probably wouldn't even be here that long. They seldom were.

As he trundled into the bathroom to replace the towel, something fell from within the white folds and fluttered to the floor. Lance plucked it up between his thumb and forefinger and held it to the light: a single dark feather, shining iridescent in greens and purples.


	4. Chapter 4

'Man,' Hunk whined, throwing his hands up so batter flew against the walls. 'Just let it go.' He set the bowl aside and pulled in a breath, looking at the ceiling. When he looked back at Lance, his face was a picture of seriousness. 'I mean, have you considered maybe he's not worth all this… energy?'

'Hunk…' Sitting with legs crossed on the work-top, Lance was aghast.

'No, no,' the unofficial chef protested. 'I mean like… Maybe he's changed. Maybe this whole thing has changed him, and he doesn't want to see us anymore. No point chasing down a guy that doesn't want to be found. If he comes back, he comes back. If not…' Hunk picked up the bowl and began mixing again. 'Then I'm not going to drag him here. I don't have the emotional goods anymore, man. I'm tired. We're all tired.'

Lance bit his lip and considered an empty chair at the table. A chair where just months ago, Keith sat; quiet but present. Serious always, but sometimes sparing a smile. 'It was never like this when he was here. We were never this bare. It all feels wrong .'

Another shrug from Hunk. 'Not your job to fix it, Lance.'

Hopping down from his place on the countertop, Lance fixed Hunk with a stare. 'That's the thing, Hunk. I think it might be.'

OoO

It was weeks later when the sleek marmora pod docked at the castle ship and Kolivan strode out, a smaller figure tight behind him. The crowd of assembled paladins drew a collective breath. Keith, their Keith, was here. He flanked the marmora leader silent as before, but with his mask still activated. Lance itched in place to walk up to Keith and punch him full in the face. Or shake him. Or hug him. Every line of the former Red Paladin's body, however, said: stay away. He offered no hello, just a single cursory nod to Allura and Shiro. He was dismissed with a wave from Kolivan, slipping out by a side door.

Lance peeled away from the group, anger eating at him from the bottom of his belly to the boiling mess of his head. He marched into the corridor, his eyes fixed dead ahead, bearing straight for Keith's old room. This ends now, he thought.

He didn't waste a second, elbowing the door panel with enough force to pop the lock. He dragged the door open with one tug, ignoring the shuddering noise of straining gears.

'Hey!' he yelled to the dark figure frozen in the centre of the lightless room. Keith's blade was drawn but dormant, held lightly in one outstretched hand. With a deft flick of his wrist he could bury that blade in Lance's forehead, he knew. But whatever. Fuck him. Fuck this selfish excuse for a paladin.

Through exertion or anger, Lance was panting. He licked his lips, trying to catch his breath. Scant light slipped into the room over his shoulder and caught something in Keith's eyes as they pinned him in place at the door; like a film or some strange cataracts. They flashed creamy yellow, but in the next instant were dark again.

'What the fuck, man?' Keith demanded, slipping his blade into its sheath. 'I could have killed you. You can't just come barrelling in wherever you like. This is still–'

'I'm sorry.' The words were out before Lance even knew he wanted to say them. He gawped in the wake of them. Well, that was a surprise.

The shock was equally apparent on Keith's face. 'What?'

'I'm sorry,' Lance repeated. 'I'm sorry I was a jerk. I'm sorry about how we treated you after we found out you were part galra. I'm sorry we made you feel sad, or left out, or judged. I'm sorry you lost your marmora team-mate. I'm sorry I don't remember his name. I'm sorry we didn't do something nice for Ulaz or Thace or Antok. I know you liked them. I know what they stood for and what they did.' He inched into the room. 'I'm sorry we didn't listen to you when we lost Shiro. And I'm sorry we didn't listen to you when we found him again.' He took a deep breath, but it shook in his throat. Keith regarded him with his same earnest, open face and Lance's heart broke for having waited so long to tell him how important he was. How could they have never said it? How could they have waved goodbye and let him venture into space without them; into possible, probable death. 'And I'm sorry we let you go. We shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry.'

'Lance.'

'But please come back. We miss you. We need you. I'll stop being a jerk. I'm sorry, Ke–'

'I can't come back.'

'You can.'

'Turn on the light.'

'Whu…'

'Lights!' Keith commanded and the room was thrown into the washed-out yellow glow common to the castle ship. Lance swiftly covered his eyes with a hand, then withdrew it as they adjusted.

'Fuck,' he whispered.

Hunk was right: Keith had changed, but not in any way they could ever have anticipated. Under the yellow wash, the alterations were obvious, and Keith, resigned to letting himself be examined, choked out a bitter, 'Happy?'

His blade suit was pulled down to his hips, exposing violently mottled skin in tones of purple that were lighter about the chest. The yellow Lance had seen before appeared to belong to a third eyelid that slipped across Keith's violet eyes intermittently. Darkly felted ears drew back in sharp points that ended in impressive tufts, lynx-like and elegant. The well-toned body they'd seen weeks before in Keith's room was harder still and wrong somehow. Longer in the arm, joints looser. The same blossoms of purple ran up and down his arms and peaked out from under the suit at his feet. His feet. The toes were…

'Keith…' Lance shook his head, trying to puzzle it out. At first glance, it appeared as bad bruising; a trick of the eye. But on closer inspection, it was clear the middle three toes of each foot had rotted to blackened stumps. The remaining two were swollen and the nails enlarged and deeply embedded.

'They say it's the quintessence. We're finding so much of it now.' He seemed to remember something, face pained. 'Things don't always work out. The canisters leak. Or smash.'

Lance hissed, pressed a fist to his mouth.

Sighing, Keith ambled over to the bed awkwardly and dropped down into an incongruously familiar slump, hands dangling between his knees. Lance could see now that each finger was tipped with a coarse, black claw. 'Kolivan says it probably started in Red– in the lion. He could already see the signs when I joined the blades, apparently. I was having trouble coordinating. My ears kept popping. Lots of stuff, I guess.' His uncanny eyes drifted up to Lance. 'We're all exposed, but when you have a certain composition…' He gestured at himself and huffed through his nose.

Lance shifted towards the bed and eased himself to sitting. 'Is it sore?'

Keith checked the open door, considered whatever it was Keith tended to consider, and shrugged again, mumbling a non-committal 'ahn'oh'. He coughed. 'I guess. Sometimes. Like an ache.'

From this angle, Lance could see that the dramatic changes to Keith's ears had distracted from more changes still. His breath caught in his throat. Running from within Keith's pitch hair was a coating of black opal feathers that gleamed iridescent in purples, blues, greens. Smaller, round feathers spotted his upper back and spine, while longer ones swept across his shoulder blades and onto his arms.

'Adolescent galra develop according to their environment.'

Lance nodded, eyes still drawn to the thick coat of feathers that dressed Keith's shoulders like a cloak.

'Apparently I've lost bone density too. I'm faster is what they say: Kolivan, the others.' He flexed his shoulders and the flight feathers stood to attention. 'Resistance when landing from a height.' They flattened, 'Speed.' He tutted and shook his head. 'I guess galra biology doesn't account for us wearing suits.'

Again, Lance could only nod, dumbstruck by his friend and rival; the laundry list of changes he'd experienced. All of this had been happening, and they'd had no idea. What had Keith thought as he lay in bed changing, galaxies away from them? Had he been scared? Lance couldn't imagine.

Beside him, came a sob.

'I can never go home.'

And then Keith was crying, quietly and viciously, into the knuckles of his right hand. Fat tears spilled down his cheeks and splashed to the ground.

'Hey, hey,' Lance cooed, scooting closer and ever-so-gingerly laying one arm across Keith's shoulders. The feathers were like warm satin beneath his fingers.

Keith shook his head and spoke with a voice thick with tears. 'How much more am I going to change?' he cried. Distraught, he pulled in a stuttering breath.

Lance ran his hand up to brush against a thinly furred ear until his fingers were buried in Keith's hair. A few fine quills brushed against his palm. He pressed Keith's head against his breastbone and lay his lips against the crown of his head. 'It's going to be okay,' he said softly. 'It's going to be okay.'

'You don't understand. I can never go home, Lance. Who- who would want me? This…' He trembled in Lance's hold. 'Nobody. Nobody.'

The errant feather that had tumbled from Keith's towel all those weeks ago burned in Lance's pocket. He reached up to take Keith's tear-drenched hand, uncurling the fingers until his soft palm lay open. He pressed the feather into it and closed the fingers with his own.

'I'm here,' he said.

OoO

When it happened, or how it happened, he didn't know. Lance opened bleary eyes to a thicket of black hair and the curve of a warm back against his chest. The strange quills were like fine china against his skin, the down impossibly soft. Evidently, at some point he'd lost his shirt. He craned his neck and saw it crumpled together with Keith's blade suit. Keith was totally naked beneath the thin sheet that bunched around his thin waist. The door was closed, the lights off. They'd cried themselves out apparently. Lance's eyes were still hot coals and his face felt tight from dried tears. He cleared his throat as quietly as he could, adjusting himself until Keith's smaller frame was flush against him. Keith shifted, a strange but contented-sounding chitter issuing from somewhere deep in his throat. These changes: what must Keith be thinking? Or feeling? He'd stayed away from them because he was scared. And worst of all, Lance understood. He scrunched his eyes closed, remembering every slight, every insult he'd tossed Keith's way.

'Keith?' he whispered. One ear twitched but the former paladin slept on. Lance pushed his nose behind the shell of Keith's greatly altered ear, nuzzling at the soft felt. He smelled scalp and charcoal-like soap. 'You're so soft,' he said, disbelief clear in his voice. And he'd always been, Lance understood now. The crossed-arms and darting looks, the absences and reluctance to mix. Keith was a paradox of savage power and a timorous selfhood constantly threatened by every blow and abandonment. I care about him. Deeply. Lance chuckled, I guess I've changed too.

Keith grunted and drew in a long, deep breath, stretching luxuriously against Lance's chest. A few bone-deep pops suggested that Keith was correct; he wasn't done changing. He twisted in place. Dark eyes met Lance's. Even in the low light, Lance could see the pupils blown to all-black discs. Veils of shimmering gold closed and opened again in a beat. Alien, beautiful.

'Lance?' Keith asked.

Lance smiled. 'The one and only.'

Keith scoffed. 'You're so cheesy.' Then, 'You stayed.'

His expression was full of the kind of openness and hope Lance had been blind to all these months. His heart had started hammering in his chest. Lance swallowed, suddenly shy. 'Keith,' he said. 'Can I kiss you?'

The briefest flicker of surprise danced across Keith's face, but in the next moment he closed the space between them, soft lips bowed in a smile.


End file.
